Artist Talk by Yoko Imamura

Yoko Imamura

Hairdresser and adornment artist.

After graduating from high school she came to the UK to study animal biology. She then changed course and became a hairdresser at the Sanrizz hair salon. After staying here for five years she returned to Japan, gained a national qualification, and won a top ten award at a nationwide competition. She is currently polishing her skills with a view to taking over her mother’s beauty salon, which has been operating for fifty years. Part of her work as a hairdresser is dressing customers in kimono, and through this she became aware that large numbers of kimonos are lying unused, so she launched her project ‘Atelier Yoko’, making use of the respect for history that she found while studying in the UK. Through her ‘wearable art’, which breathes new life into old and now unwearable kimonos, she asserts the colours, feel and comfort of real silk, which is becoming increasingly rare.

‘I want to be one of the threads linking Japan’s traditions to the world, and to the future’.